Study Finds Local News Websites as Much as 500% More Likely to Engage Retail, Auto, Real Estate and Travel Customers

SARASOTA, Fla., Dec. 8, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- The Local Media Consortium (LMC), a strategic partnership of leading local media companies, today released results of a comprehensive analysis of consumer behavior on its member websites. Conducted by marketing analytics company Jumpshot, the study found that visitors to the LMCmember websites, which include 1,600 local media websites across the U.S. – from Lee Enterprises' Santa Maria Times to Cox Media Group's WFXT-TV in Boston – are as much as six times more likely than the general web population to reach engaged consumers in the retail, automotive, real estate and travel spaces.

The LMC audience footprint currently spans 155 million unique monthly visitors and its member companies serve more than four billion page views to readers. Jumpshot analyzed touchpoints related to key words, visits and engaged sessions from a sampling of 3.6 million unique visitors to LMC member sites from July 1, 2015 to June 30, 2016 and indexed the results against Jumpshot's U.S. panel.

"This study sheds light on valuable consumer behavior as it relates to local media company members of the LMC and how consumers turn to local media provider websites at a much higher rate than average for content in key consumer verticals," said Rusty Coats, Executive Director of the LMC. "We are pleased to see how well our member websites reach mobile-and PC-based retail consumers searching for popular keywords and domains from automotive brands to homebuilders to pet products and travel."

The following are some of the findings from the Jumpshot analysis:

Local media companies index well among mobile consumers in retail and travel, affirming the value of the commitment by local media companies make their sites more responsive, quicker to load and easier to view ads on mobile devices.

For instance, LMC mobile visitors are 506 percent more likely to have searched for bodybuilding.com, petsmart.com and zappos.com than the Jumpshot U.S. panel

Local media site visitors are also nearly 5 times more likely to have searched for jetblue.com, hilton.com or delta.com on their mobile devices than the general U.S. panel of web surfers.

Automotive shoppers or intenders are as much as 400 percent more likely to visit an automotive original equipment manufacturer (OEM) website as the general population.

Volvo is the automotive brand that indexed highest with LMC website visitors on mobile devices in that LMC member mobile website readers were 3.4 times more likely to land on Volvo.com than the Jumpshot US population

People who shopped for Buick vehicles on their PCs were 4.5 times more likely to have visited a local media website than the general online population

Local media sites index well against the US online population when it comes to engaged shoppers who visited three or more pages on popular automotive marketplace sites such as carsdirect.com (3.5 times better), edmunds.com (3.4 times better) and enterprisecarsales.com (3.3 times better).

The Jumpshot analysis also found that local media sites index well with certain touchpoints on mobile versus PC, and vice-versa. For instance, mobile LMC visitors are 5 times more likely to have searched for airline site Spirit.com on a mobile device, but only 2.5 times more likely to have done so with a PC.

"These findings showcase the value local news and information providers create and deliver to the advertising community each and every day," said Christian A. Hendricks, vice president for products, marketing and innovation at McClatchy, and LMC board chair. "It's now proven the collective and scaled strength of the LMC's high-quality digital properties provide advertisers with an efficient and cost-effective path to customers," adds Hendricks.

"Publishers are the lifeblood of the web and the Local Media Consortium represents the best of what the web has to offer," said Laurent Cordier, Global Managing Director of News Partnerships at Google. "The local media sources represented by the LMC attract fiercely loyal and engaged audiences because they connect us to our communities and to information that closely impacts our daily lives. This research is further validation that high quality, local and relevant journalism drives unique opportunities for advertisers."

Google partners with the LMC and their member companies to bring local news content to Google Play Newsstand and drive traffic from search results to media websites. Google also provides LMC members with ad serving technology and access to Google's DoubleClick Ad Exchange to create a private, premium marketplace of LMC members.

Methodology

The study analyzed overlap in touchpoints performed by Local Media Consortium (LMC) US Member Panelists versus the Jumpshot US Panel from July 1, 2015 through June 30, 2016. The LMC panel was comprised of 3,604,329 unique visitors with 151,774,909 page views. The Jumpshot US Panel was comprised of 20+ million unique visitors with 117+ billion page views who opted into sharing their browsing activity from their PCs, Android Smartphones and tablets. Jumpshot's data is based on actual click, browsing and purchase behavior. Jumpshot uses a proprietary algorithm to identify and remove Personally Identifiable Information (PII). The data is cleaned and calculated to make it representative of the Internet. It is then aggregated and extrapolated to online population (3 billion) using algorithms that calibrate by location, socio-demographics, device, etc. LMC Index numbers were calculated by dividing the LMC data points by the Jumpshot US Panel data points.

"Local media outlets are clearly indexing above the norm in reaching engaged consumers in key verticals such as automotive, retail, real estate and travel," said Randy Antin, VP Marketing for Jumpshot, which tracks more than 160 billion monthly clicks from its 100-million global user panel. "When you couple LMC's impressive index numbers with its wide and eclectic reach in terms of sheer unique visitors per month, these local media site members become an even more attractive medium for web advertisers."

About the Local Media Consortium:

The Local Media Consortium is a strategic partnership of leading local media companies focused on increasing member companies' share of digital revenue and audience by pursuing new relationships with a variety of technology companies and service providers. The LMC was founded in 2013 to address the needs of advertisers seeking to reach high-quality audiences on brand safe local digital properties at scale. In addition, the LMC provides members with access to leading technology and content solutions by fostering key partnerships with companies including Google, Monster, Yahoo and others. LMC membership spans more than 75 local media companies in top markets across the United States and Puerto Rico, and includes more than 1,600 publications. More information is available at www.localmediaconsortium.com.